During the Progressive Era (1890-1920) instructors taught gymnastic and dance practices in American settlement houses. Developed by white, educated middle-class women, settlement houses offered these classes to reflect the "progressive ethos," which hinged on the idea of individual responsibility for the greater good of society. Dance offered a method of molding and regulating the immigrant body into good, progressive Americans. This examination focuses on four primary practices – physical culture/gymnastic body-strengthening exercises, ballroom dance, folk dance, and theatrical dance – in three settlement houses: Hull-House (Chicago, founded 1889), Greenwich House (New York, 1902), and Northwestern University Settlement (Chicago, 1891). The overlapping chronology of both the houses and the dance forms show the flexibility of the organization of the settlement house and the amorphous nature of the value system advocated by Progressive reformers. Settlement workers built ideal tenement houses throughout the United States, which provided ample space, ventilation, light and cleanliness, in an attempt to counter the negative effects of rapid modernization and industrialization at the turn of the twentieth century. They replicated these ideals in the dance presented there. The resulting practices at settlement houses embodied middle-class ideals of morality, refinement, respectability and appropriateness. Investigation of the sources, however, reveals that despite their good intentions, the settlement workers' Americanization of movement subverted the spirit of immigrant cultures. The role of settlement houses has not been analyzed in terms of what they declared as legitimate movement in establishing proper "Americanization." This study will therefore look more closely at and compare the inclusion of dance from the founding of the three settlement houses and trace their re-visions. / A Thesis submitted to the Department of Dance in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts. / Summer Semester, 2009. / April 24, 2009. / Progressive Era, Physical Culture, Ballroom Dance, Folk Dance, Modern Dance, Tap Dance, Jane Addams, Hull-House, Greenwich House, Northwestern University Settlement / Includes bibliographical references. / Sally R. Sommer, Professor Directing Thesis; Tricia Young, Committee Member; Patricia Phillips, Committee Member; Jennifer Atkins, Committee Member.

Only written from 1660-1714, intrigue plays provide a unique window into the social, political and theatrical milieu of early modern England. They were more successful than many plays now considered necessary to university curricula, yet they have received relatively little scholarly attention, either dismissed as farce or studied within limited parameters. The plays rely on non-verbal elements, including foreign locations and characters, disguise, music and violence to comment upon social roles, marriage law and England's burgeoning imperialism. Examined in the context of their imagined period performance, intrigue plays are revealed as a vital part of Restoration and early Eighteenth Century drama. / A Dissertation submitted to the School of Theatre in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosphy. / Spring Semester, 2009. / March 19, 2009. / Restoration, Intrigue, Eighteenth Century, Theatre / Includes bibliographical references. / Mary Karen Dahl, Professor Directing Dissertation; Helen Burke, Outside Committee Member; Natalya Baldyga, Committee Member.

Community musical theater actively engages individuals in music-making and dramatic performances across the United States. Musical experiences in the realm of community musical theater afford individuals opportunities for meaningful musical and social interactions. This intensive study of music as a social activity chronicles the experiences of a community group in the southeastern United States as they present a production of Maury Yeston's blockbuster musical Titanic. Participants' approaches to music-making on the community level, their reasons for involvement, and their view of the relationship between community and professional musical theater are discussed. This examination of community musical theater, which examines its ability to shape and influence the most fundamental aspects of its participants' lives, reveals the power of this compelling variety of musical and dramatic performance and its vital function in the larger community. My research focuses on influences that define or confine musical experience and interactions that come to shape these musical activities. Community musical theater is explored as an important activity that affords individuals opportunities to fulfill a need to be musical through self-exploration and collaboration in a social environment. Community musical theater participants are positioned at the crossroads of what Thomas Turino refers to as "the Possible" and "the Actual." The relationship between the Possible and the Actual is explored as it unfolds in three contexts: between community musical theater and Broadway, within the musical Titanic itself, and for the individual participant in community musical theater. This thesis reveals the power of actualizing possibilities in community musical theater and how the music at the heart of this experience is so meaningful to its participants. / A Thesis submitted to the College of Music in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Music. / Spring Semester, 2010. / October 23, 2009. / Community, Ethnomusicology, Musical Theater, Participatory Music-making, Broadway, Myth, Ritual, Social History of the Imagination / Includes bibliographical references. / Frank Gunderson, Professor Directing Thesis; Michael B. Bakan, Committee Member; Michael Broyles, Committee Member; Michael Buchler, Committee Member.

The Hill Cumorah Pageant is a large-scale Mormon cultural performance that has the power both to identify the primary Church doctrines and to transform those who witness and participate in its performance. The pageant performance uses traditional Western theatrical performance elements as a medium to recreate ritually the Church's founding narratives; the performance thus combines theatre's power to transform temporarily the spectators and performers with ritual's power to transform permanently all participants' cultural and personal identity. The pageant also uses the cultural designation of "missionary" to intertwine Church missionary practices and purposes to further define the culture and to use the pageant performance to proselytize for the Church. In this dissertation, I analyze how these different processes and purposes combine to create a performance that is one part theatre, one part ritual, and one part missionary proselytizing, and wholly not exactly any of its parts. By combining these purposes and processes, the pageant creates an amalgamation that possesses qualities from each but by combining them ultimately creates a performance medium and experience that is different and unique. My analysis considers multiple aspects of the pageant performance. One key aspect common to theatre, ritual, and missionary work is transformation. Rituals generally are defined as efficacious, which means that rituals can create lasting transformations for participants in the ritual and for those who observe a community ritual performance. Theatre is illusionary and imitates life. Theatre may profoundly affect spectators, but as far as the performers who play different characters, the performers resume their pre-performance identities following the performance. Thus, actor transformations in theatre are primarily temporary. Missionary proselytizing work involves trying to convert or transform non-members into members. Proselytizing practices certainly can include performance, can include missionaries performing texts in order to present ideas they wish investigators to accept, and missionaries performing behavior they wish investigators to believe or even learn and adopt. My work examines and demonstrates how the pageant performance transforms both the spectators and the participants through complex, multipurpose processes. / A Dissertation Submitted to the School of Theatre in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Fall Semester, 2006. / October 17, 2006. / Cultural Performance, Rodger Sorensen, James Bell, LDS, Latter-day Saints, Church of Jesus Christ, Joseph Smith, Book of Mormon, Mormonism, Ritual, Theatrical, Missionary / Includes bibliographical references. / Carrie Sandahl, Professor Directing Dissertation; Joseph K. Torgesen, Outside Committee Member; Mary Karen Dahl, Committee Member.

One of the most important roles of the online instructor is to insure successful teaching by keeping students' interactions and discussions focused on topic, adding knowledge and expertise, and maintaining group harmony. Therefore, the success of online learning depends on the instructors' ability to acquire new competencies, rather than mastering the technology. Despite the growth in online instructor competency related studies, there is a lack of research regarding the instructors' roles and competencies from the distance learning students' perspective. This study was an attempt to explore distance learning students' perceptions of the roles and competencies defined by experts in the field. A comprehensive list of roles, outputs, and competencies of online instructors were provided to the students in order to rate the importance of each role and competency. It was the purpose of this study to compare the findings of this study with the findings of pervious studies. The population of this study included all distance learning graduate students (n = 328) currently enrolled in the School of Information Studies at Florida State University. Forty-two percent (n = 140) of the original student population of 328, completed and submitted the online survey. Roles and competencies were ranked by their importance; ranking was also achieved by taking the average of competency means across roles and competencies. Results for the top ten competencies in overall importance, based on highest mean rating are: Content Knowledge, Facilitation (discussion) Skills, Organizational Skills, Planning Skills, English Proficiency, Presentation Skills, Interpersonal Communication Skills, Learning Styles and Theory, Teaching Strategies/models, Skills with Internet Tools for Instruction. xiii The findings also determined that when compared to previous competency studies, there was a significant difference between students' perceptions and experts' perceptions regarding the most important online instructor competencies. Experts rated social competencies (interpersonal communication skills) number one in the list of top ten most important online instructor competencies; on the other hand, students rated intellectual competencies (content knowledge) number one in their list of top ten. However, both experts and students concurred regarding managerial competencies, because both rated at least four managerial skills in the list of top ten competencies. Distance learning students' responses indicated that instructors should give careful attention to the development and improvement of their intellectual, social, managerial, and technical roles and competencies. The importance of paying attention to the technical and managerial roles, in addition to intellectual and social competencies of the online instructor, were emphasized as critical factors for the success of discussion and interaction in the online environment. This dissertation has helped bridge the gap between the perceptions of distance education experts and distance learning students by providing a comprehensive list of important online instructors' roles and competencies. Due to the rate of change in technologies used to deliver instruction and related changes in higher education, it is recommended to do another study to identify more roles and competencies. This study should be expanded to include the perceptions of students in different disciplines and other countries. / A Thesis Submitted to the College of Music in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Music. / Summer Semester, 2005. / May 22, 2005. / African Diaspora, Cultural Memory, Communicative Memory, Identity, Memory, Collective Memory / Includes bibliographical references. / Frank Gunderson, Professor Directing Thesis; Dale Olsen, Committee Member; Michael B. Bakan, Committee Member.

To combat rising levels of juvenile delinquency in Buffalo, New York, in the 1930s, the Federal Theatre Project created the Crime Prevention Serial. The multi-episode series follows the trials and tribulations of Johnnie Smith, a hard-headed, 16-year-old juvenile delinquent from Buffalo, New York. Along with his family, various representatives from law enforcement, some recurring narrators who act as moral guides, and real-life guest speakers from the city of Buffalo, Johnnie's less-than-honorable escapades offer a fictionalized account of this very real and rising issue. Broadcast every Tuesday and Thursday night at 7:45 pm on Buffalo's WEBR radio station, the short episodes portray a customized view of juvenile delinquency, reform, and patriotism that simultaneously speaks to national concerns and Buffalo's distinct local culture and needs. In this way, the Crime Prevention Serial serves as a unique case study that broadly explores a larger question within FTP scholarship: How do specific theatres and the communities in which they exist—in this case the FTP and Buffalo—shape and inform one another? This thesis adds to the existing FTP scholarship by examining three specific tropes and themes constructed in the series—juvenile delinquency, reform, and patriotism—in order to explore the relationship between theatre and community by examining the similarities and discrepancies between how these ideas existed within the radio dramas and everyday life. This thesis interrogates the specific relationship between Buffalo and its local FTP, but also to question how the FTP, through its mandate of local relevance, served as a vehicle for provoking conversation around larger, national issues. How does Buffalo's crafted text, commenting on pressing national issues actively achieve the FTP's mission? Understanding the Buffalo FTP's Crime Prevention Serial challenges a streamlined notion of juvenile delinquency and the FTP and allows us to engage with the intricacies of an issue's representation, fiction, and reality. Meticulously crafted, this radio drama weaves together a precise portrayal of a terrifying local and national concern in the hope that young men will abandon lives of crime and return to their families for an idyllic evening, gathered together around the radio. / Thesis submitted to the School Theatre in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts. / Spring Semester 2016. / April 12, 2016. / Buffalo, New York, federal theatre project, juvenile delinquency, radio drama / Includes bibliographical references. / Elizabeth A. Osborne, Professor Directing Thesis; Mary Karen Dahl, Committee Member; Samer Al-Saber, Committee Member.

Denjenigen Theaterformen, die gemeinhin unter dem Namen Commedia dell’Arte, Commedia all’improvviso, Comédie italienne oder Théâtre de la Foire bekannt sind, erweist sich ein Verfahren als grundlegend, das mit dem Erzählen von anderen Welten umschrieben werden kann. Auf der Basis mythischer Figuren und Maschere erzählten Akteure in der Tradition des souveränen Schauspielers von anderen, jenseitigen, exotischen Welten. Aus dieser Perspektive wurden die Normen, Regeln, Zwänge, Werte, Tabus dieser, der ›eigentlichen‹ Welt, spielerisch hinterfragt und relativiert. Nach dem jeweils unterschiedlichen historischen Kontext wurde ein bestimmter Aspekt dieser anderen Welt hervorgehoben: gegen Ende des 17. und zu Beginn des 18. Jahrhunderts in Paris die Vorstellung, der Traum eines Lebens ohne Theater. / In those forms of theatre, known as Commedia dell’Arte, Commedia all’improvviso, Comédie italienne or Théâ tre de la Foire, the technique of telling of other worlds is essential. On the basis of mythical figures and maschere actors narrated of other, ulterior, exotic worlds within the tradition of the sovereign performer. From this perspective norms, rules, constraints, values, and taboos of this, the „real“ world, were playfully challenged and relativized. Depending on each different historical context a specific aspect of the other world was emphasized: towards the end of the 17th and the beginning of the 18th century in Paris the imagination, the dream of a life without theatre.

The purpose of this study is to investigate stressors among soon-to-be graduating instrumental, vocal, and theatre performance majors. Seventy-two possible performance stressors were compiled into 8 categories: Creative, Intellectual, Lifestyle, Business, Physical, Cognitive, Emotional/ Psychological, and Social with the intention to examine prevalence among performance majors as well as similarities and differences between categories. Participants (N=45) for this study were performance majors within areas of Music Theatre, Vocal Performance, and Instrumental (Woodwinds/Brass, Piano) Performance who answered a 72-item survey. Results showed that Lifestyle, Cognitive, Emotional/Psychological, and Business categories including building a professional resume, overall perception of failure, feelings of inadequacy/rejection, and job instability are among the highest rated stressors and stressor categories for performers. Further results and implications are discussed within the paper. / A Thesis submitted to the College of Music in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Music. / 2019 / November 12, 2019. / Music therapy, performance, performers, stress / Includes bibliographical references. / Lori Gooding, Professor Directing Thesis; Jayne Standley, Committee Member; Kimberly VanWeelden, Committee Member.

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